Aptos accuses Monad of plagiarism, stealing technology or riding on traffic?

Author: Ashley, BlockBeats

Perhaps influenced by the announcement of HyperEVM's launch, its competitor Monad in the L1 track finally couldn't sit still. Just one day after HyperEVM went live, this project, which raised $225 million in funding led by Paradigm last April, finally launched its testnet.

However, amidst the community's cheers and various airdrop tutorials, another L1 competitor, Aptos, directly posted on social media platform X, accusing Monad of plagiarizing Aptos's technology. Thus, a war of words began.

The Beginning of the Controversy

This dispute over technological originality was first ignited by Aptos's research director Alexander Spiegelman: "I don't understand why Monad is spending so much time copying Aptos's technology. It's all open source, and there are already many peer-reviewed papers. Instead of being secretive, they might as well just copy openly."

At this moment, it was a big day for Monad, and co-founder James Hunsaker couldn't tolerate someone ruining the occasion, directly replying in the comments: "Optimistic Concurrency Control (OCC) was discovered in 1979, back when your parents hadn't even met. I was already researching Software Transactional Memory (STM) in a Haskell environment long before you were out of diapers. BlockSTM is a simple extension of these concepts. I've never seen any Aptos code; in fact, if you hadn't published this nonsense, I wouldn't even think of Aptos. We properly cite anything related to consensus in our documentation and papers."

Seeing Hunsaker refuse to acknowledge, Spiegelman again presented the facts: "There's no need to attack the person instead of the issue. We all know how and why Monad was created. BlockSTM is one of the few (if not the only) STMs that has been put into production. Before BlockSTM, nothing could really achieve efficiency. Given your background, you should know this. While there are thousands of papers, none can truly scale. BlockSTM is a breakthrough, and BlockSTM v2 is the future." He then flaunted his credentials: "By the way, I don't know about you, but I wasn't even in diapers when this happened."

As the tension escalated, Hunsaker directly bypassed the technical issues and shot back: "Were you previously on the ground?" At this point, Spiegelman was already speechless and helplessly retorted: "Do you know the difference between read-write locks and mutexes?" This time, Hunsaker did not reply.

Later, Spiegelman mocked in the comments: "I guess by the time you finally launch in 2029, we will all know the truth." He also lamented: "Monad is copying our technology; if they could acknowledge and give us due credit for our hard work in research and engineering, that might be acceptable."

Frequent Plagiarism Incidents in New Public Chains: Is It the "Unique Open Source Culture" of the Crypto Space?

The plagiarism controversies surrounding new public chains are not uncommon in the cryptocurrency field. Sonic's high-performance design has been questioned for mimicking Solana's PoH and pipelined architecture; Sui and Aptos, both derived from Diem, have sparked a "brotherly dispute" over the similarities in the Move language and parallel execution; Aleo's zk-SNARKs have been accused of copying zkSync's ZKP framework; Berachain's modular architecture and IBC functionality have been viewed by the Cosmos community as a "luxury fork"; and Mantra's RWA tokenization model has been considered to have drawn from Ondo Finance's successful experience.

The crypto industry values the spirit of open source, with most projects making their code public. In the current crypto market, where the saying "time is money" is vividly illustrated, the phenomenon of "fast fish eating slow fish" is common. This open source culture has given rise to some projects that directly copy code using Ctrl C + Ctrl V. Even in non-crypto fields, early development of the Linux kernel also sparked disputes over code contribution attribution.

This open source culture has greatly lowered the entry barriers for new public chains, allowing new projects to iterate quickly while standing on the shoulders of giants. In the debate between Monad and Aptos, Aptos's open-sourced BlockSTM provides a reference for the industry, which Monad may draw from. However, Hunsaker argues that their technology is based on earlier OCC and STM, stemming from the industry's progress, reflecting a common logic among new public chains: open source achievements are public resources, and borrowing is natural. The open source culture allows new public chains to launch high-performance solutions in a short time, but it also makes the issue of original attribution difficult to resolve.

The Timing of the Dispute: Is It About Technology or Traffic?

The timing of this dispute coincided subtly with the launch of Monad's testnet. The testnet is a crucial moment for Monad to attract developers, validate technology, and solidify community trust, while Aptos's accusations shifted the focus from Monad's technological showcase to the confrontation between the two.

As a new L1 that has not yet launched its mainnet, Monad has accumulated significant community expectations, thanks to last year's $225 million funding led by Paradigm and the narrative of being an "Ethereum high-performance evolver." For this testnet, the Monad team made ample preparations, triggering a series of moves to maintain community attention and goodwill right after the launch. Monad officially announced on social media that it had sent test coins to over 8.8 million active Ethereum addresses, while the Backpack wallet was the first to support the Monad testnet, and Wormhole also officially launched the Monad testnet.

For Monad, the launch of the testnet is not only an opportunity for technical validation but also a key window to attract EVM developers and users. If it can deliver on its promise of 10,000 TPS, Monad is likely to establish a foothold in the L1 track and may even threaten the market position of high-performance chains like Aptos. On the X platform, community expectations for the testnet have already heightened the buzz, with some users calling it a "project where scientists pick up money," and a plethora of airdrop tutorials have emerged. This momentum is precisely the narrative capital that Monad needs to protect and amplify.

In contrast, Aptos's research director Spiegelman chose to launch accusations on the very day of the testnet launch, perhaps considering market competition. Although it remains undecided who is the true technological original, Aptos's decision to attack while Monad was garnering significant traffic has evidently yielded results. During the community's observation of the spectacle, Aptos's native token APT exhibited strong price increases. As of the time of writing, according to market data, APT had risen by 7% in the past 24 hours, briefly reaching $7.

Aptos's move may win more than just a price increase. In the crypto market, attention is a scarce resource. Since the addition of Aptos network USDC to Coinbase's listing roadmap in January, there hasn't been much new news from Aptos this year. This accusation has, to some extent, redirected market attention towards Aptos's open source contributions and technological authority, effectively dousing cold water on the hot Monad.

In the face of this turmoil, neither Monad nor Aptos's official accounts have made a statement, and BlockBeats will continue to track the developments of the event.